1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an exposure control apparatus for camera, and more particularly to determination of exposure in consideration of season or sunrise/sunset time.
2. Related Background Art
Automatic exposure control of a camera is generally achieved by detecting the brightness of an object with a light metering device, determining an exposure value based on said object brightness and the sensitivity of the photographic film used, and driving the diaphragm and the shutter according to said exposure value.
However, in such exposure determination based solely on the information on object brightness and that on film sensitivity, the atmosphere or mood of the printed photograph is often significantly different from that actually felt by the photographer, because the exposure is usually so determined as to obtain a constant amount of exposure to light. For example a scene in the evening dusk can be reproduced as an unnatural photograph as light as in the daytime.
Also a camera incorporating an electronic flash device automatically giving flash in response to the detection of object brightness executes a photographing operation with flash emission automatically to a relatively dark object, for example an object in the evening dusk. For this reason the evening tone intended by the photographer cannot be obtained on the photograph.
The photographer may manually correct the exposure or prohibit the flash emission in order to prevent such situations, but such manual operations are not only cumbersome but require experience for obtaining an appropriate exposure.
On the other hand, a photographing operation with strong background illumination, such as back-lighted photographing on the sunny summer beach or photographing with snow in the background, results in so-called underexposed photograph in which the main object appears undesirably dark. Such phenomenon is even more conspicuous in a reversal film with a narrow latitude than in a negative film which generally has a relatively wide latitude.